


Unspoken

by narsus



Category: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011)
Genre: Introspection, M/M, Post-Movie(s), Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-22
Updated: 2012-05-22
Packaged: 2017-11-05 20:28:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,134
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/410684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/narsus/pseuds/narsus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The language of gesture and movement speaks just as loudly as words.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unspoken

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy belongs to John le Carré, StudioCanal and Working Title Films.

Ricki never tires of watching Peter smoke. He’s a smoker himself. They all are. It’s a fashionable pastime, and never mind how it helps deal with stress. Yet there’s something about the way Peter smokes, under more private circumstances, usually, when he’s a little drunk. In public, there’s nothing to write home about. The usual motion of cigarette held between forefinger and thumb. Little to no difference between the way Peter smokes then and the way a builder or a mechanic would. It’s a functional gesture, more suited, in fact, to smoking out of doors. Which is why Ricki had started watching in the first place. There’s no need to curve a hand around the glowing tip of a cigarette indoors, not constantly at any rate, but Peter does it anyway. He smokes, in public, like a workman.

None of it meshes with everything else that Ricki knows about Peter at all. Nobody with diction like that smokes like that unless they are deliberately trying to make a point. Men like that are used to both lighting and smoking their cigarettes indoors. They’re familiar with the stretch of a hand, outwards, to hold a cigarette away from the back of the hand. The ones who hold their cigarettes otherwise are, have been, in Ricki’s experience, trying to express some solidarity with those whose trade means that they mostly smoke out of doors. No amount of hunting parties or outdoor drinks, before the horses head off, will change that. And it does strike Ricki as deliberate. He’s seen Peter stop himself from letting his hand curve back, naturally, gracefully, into the position that he’s most used to holding his cigarette. Only the students who’d thought they entertained Communist sympathies, once upon a time, did that sort of thing in Ricki’s experience. It could be a hangover from that sort of affection but Peter doesn’t strike him as the sort of man to entertain such illusions.

Above all things Peter is a horribly pragmatic man. If Ricki had found himself dumped behind the Iron Curtain, he’s under no illusions, as to whether or not Peter would bother to trade for him. Form always serves function. Peter is charming enough when he wants to be, and has no qualms about treating his subordinates well as a mainstay, in the same way that he’d just as easily write them off and recommend that they be left to die, if it serves purpose. Peter is not prone to sentiment any more than Ricki is. It’s what makes them truly dangerous. Peter will never defect, not because of faith in the system, but simply because he doesn’t believe that the Russians have it any better. He’s friendly enough with the Moscow agents he has to deal with on a reasonably regular basis and, so Ricki’s heard, they’re always offering him a means to escape, but Peter is hardly likely to take that long walk. And if he ever does it’ll turn the Circus upside-down. Loyal Peter Guillam, with his empty smiles, and dead eyes, is someone that others like to believe in. If only because he offers them a blank canvas onto which to project their ideologies.

There’s something dead and cold and mechanical there. To all of Peter’s gestures. He’s no less elegant for being an automaton but there’s no warmth to it either. Occasionally there’s a flash of fire and, always following closely behind it, hate and anguish. But that’s, usually, quickly extinguished. Peter is nothing but a machine that, one day, may very well, calmly, quietly, decide that it’d like to slit everyone’s throat instead of follow orders. Not that that’s how Peter operates. His favourite type of kill involves nothing more than his hands and a solid surface to smash someone brains out against. He has large, murderous, hands after all. Which is why Ricki likes to watch him smoke. Not in public but in private, or at least in the semi-privacy of a smoky bar. Then something strange happens. Drunk, and a little giddy, Peter’s fingers stretch out, arcing backwards, as he holds his cigarette. His hands move artlessly, turning and falling at angles, as if he is a mechanical doll with ball-jointed wrists. On another man it might look effeminate but there’s a slow decision to the movement that makes it ever so slightly aggressive. Ricki could easily imagine those large hands swinging, with the brutal force of momentum, to deliver a resounding backhand, made all the more devastating by the sharp edge of one of Peter’s rings.

It’s not just the hands of course. When Peter is drunk all of his soft edges melt away. He tilts his chin up more often, so as to look down his nose at everyone, his lips curve in a sneer rather than a smile, and his familiar, smooth, drawl frames words that wouldn’t be out of place in cruel drawing-room mockery. It’s like scraping wax layers off a corpse. Underneath all the trimmings and cosmetic finishes, the man that looks out at the world, with empty eyes, is far more fascinating than the man that he pretends to be. He’s terrifying. It’s something that warms Ricki immeasurably. Ricki himself isn’t afraid of this man, or at least not more so than would be reasonable, but somehow he can’t quite explain to himself why. Peter is cruel, because the world has been cruel to him in turn. It’s not an excuse, certainly not a justification, but debating the morality of the action will hardly change it.

Ricki is drawn to Peter when he’s at his most hideous. He deliberately entertains Peter’s sneering commentary about the world, plies him with drink and cigarettes, just to keep the conversation going. It’s self-serving but, even with that knowledge, Ricki isn’t quite sure what purpose it could possibly serve. He gains nothing from those occasions other than twice the drinks on his tab. He doesn’t accomplish anything other than spending time in the company of a madman. Which seems to be all he actually wants from the arrangement. It’s ridiculous to think that all he wants is to be near Peter. There’s no promise of anything else there after all, nothing more than a bleak and, usually, buried fury at the world and its inconsistencies. It makes him wonder if all Peter wants is an audience. Except there’s always something lurking there, a gleam in his eyes that suggests that there’s something, some detail that Ricki is missing.

When it finally comes to him, it’s in the memory of those terrible hands that he finds his answer. In the arc of Peter’s fingers, the sharp angle of his arm and the turn of his hand. The entire composition of which, leaves the soft skin of inner wrist turned, unwaveringly, towards Ricki.

**Author's Note:**

> Classic body language trivia of course.


End file.
